


children of magic

by derecho, petrichor (findingkairos)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Meta, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derecho/pseuds/derecho, https://archiveofourown.org/users/findingkairos/pseuds/petrichor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wizard chooses the House.</p>
            </blockquote>





	children of magic

**Author's Note:**

> for tori - happy birthday!!

It is generally recognized among the public that the Houses of Hogwarts are a reflection of the Founders themselves.

(Gryffindor values the brave, the courageous, the ones-who-will-not-bow-down. Their colors are for battle and they stand unflinching in the light.)

Four is a good number, they'd said in the beginning - four for the Founders, four for choices. Hogwarts is a place to learn magic. The stone-walls can be lonely and cold; there are nooks and crannies in which children can get lost.

(Hufflepuff values the humble, the hard-working, the unseen and unheard but without whom the world will collapse. They are the support upon which everything else stands.)

Each represents a different characteristic, and each is necessary in a person.

(Ravenclaw values the curious, the pioneers, the ones who will push at the boundaries of the known. The ones who will ask, _why? where? how?_ They are the ones who seek the fount of knowledge.)

The Houses are meant to encourage diversity, development, friendships despite House rivalries. All within the castle walls are magic; the world is not a friendly place. The witch hunts are still fresh in the memory of the land, blood soaked into the earth and unwilling to yield to time.

(Slytherin values the ambitious, the driven, the silver-tongues and cloak-and-daggers. Do not turn your back to them; the only thing you may trust in them is their wand, and sometimes not even that.)

They are never meant to be dividing.

(But humanity - oh, _humanity_. Even magic people are still people.)

-

The Sorting Hat descends upon minds when children are the ripe old age of eleven. The Purebloods and Halfbloods whose earliest memories are the moving pictures on the wall and the sparks from their parents' wands accept this easily - what else do they know? The Muggleborns come from public schooling, where each part of their education is strict, regimented, you are still a child. Where are your parents? They should be the ones making this decision.

But here is the thing - the Sorting Hat sees, yes, and thinks, and finds a potential home-away-from-home, but humanity still lingers in the halls. Harry Potter is not the only one who refused Slytherin because of the rumors.

The truth of the world is this: you need a little bit of everything. People are not like potions; each one is a universe unto itself. You cannot say the space that contains everything to ever exist is _only_ this, or _only_ that. That is an insult and a lie and a logical fallacy, all at once.

There is a reason that the Founders of Hogwarts are Four and not One. Cunning is needed for knowing when to take another route; curiosity, for the hunger for knowledge that lets the horizons expand; diligence, for not all hard work is outshined by talent; and bravery, for knowing when to turn against the tide.

-

Gryffindor is a popular house - _the_ most popular house, some might say, and that is not without its own truths. The crimson-red and shining-gold draws attention, the bold lion and their creed draw the children with dreams of growing up to be heroes. This is not a bad thing. Children should have dreams; the youngest that come to Hogwarts are eleven years old.

(The shining colors hide their own sins. The red is blood, spilled without care of allegiance; the gold is the Midas's touch. Bravery has its place in the world, but not knowing when to concede has led to losing wars. It is far too easy to be callous when all one cares about is glory.)

Hufflepuff is oft called the forgotten house, that its members are those that the other Founders searched and found wanting. What value is there in hard-work and diligence, when you can have lion's hearts and bird's sharp minds and snake's fluidity?

(Being the unseen and unheard is a double-edged sword; no one expects it when you win the game, no, but neither can anything stop a wizard who believes that everything they do is in the name of fairness.)

Ravenclaw is the prodigy's house, they say, the ones who care only for their books and their studies. Their noses are stuck in musty-old scrolls all day, and all must have meaning rooted in knowledge or else is meaningless.

(The relentless pursuit of knowledge and the cutting need to be clever - also two things that describe Ravenclaw. Living in high towers and looking down upon the world for years will change mindsets, and often does.)

But Slytherin is the only house that is _feared_ \- and had been, even before Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort and pulled the cloak of death over an entire country. It is the only one where its people are universally turned away, are jeered at, are left alone in the cold, in the dark. It is not a coincidence that their common room is in a dungeon, of all places.

The onlookers are not wrong, but neither are they _right_.

(Being cunning is not a bad thing, no. Nor is being a snake. Here's the trick: sometimes, monsters are not born but made. There is nothing to lose when you are already feared.)

-

To assess an eleven-year-old child to choose a House that will define them for the rest of their life is foolishness, some say. Those people are mostly Muggleborns' parents, the ones whose knowledge of magic are not soaked in history and tradition. The ones who see from the outside-in tend to have the clearest vision.

The Sorting Hat is magic, is the reply. It knows the child as well as they will know themselves. It is as old as the stone of Hogwarts itself, and its magic just as strong - there is no need to doubt its power. The Hat Sorts true.

(The thing that all parties overlook: the wizard -)

-

Harry Potter is not the first that has said, _Not Slytherin, not Slytherin_. Stigma and bitter history and years of distrust is not easy to erase, and when parents send children to the same school that their grandparents and great-grandparents have gone to, with the expectations that they will enter the same House as them?

It is easier, at that point, to change the course of a river without magic than to change the minds of the people.

But here is the thing: no one alive knows the secret of the Sorting Hat. Not even Dumbledore. Those brought before the Hat get a glimpse of it in that brief moment of Sorting; the older students have some inkling of the truth, one way or another. The Hat itself is not helpful in dropping hints.

That is not its Task.

Its Task is to look into the hearts of children and say what it sees: potential. Potential to be brave, to be steady, to be curious, to be cunning. It is a mirror, albeit one upon your head than outside it.

Muggleborns say that eleven years of age is far too young to be choosing Houses; but this is not the mundane world. Hogwarts lives and breathes its magic, had its stones set in place with dragonfire as its crucible, had its soul woven into its halls with hopes and wishes and dreams.

(Another truth: magic is more infinite than wizards and witches can hope to understand. They might harness it with spells, true, but merfolk and centaurs and dragons and threstrals have their own that cannot be replicated.)

-

The wand chooses the wizard. Like calls to like, even magic; there is a specific _One_ , as they call it. One wand, one wizard. Little choice about it, really.

But _Houses_ -

(Above all things, Hogwarts values choices. Magic is freedom, away from the teeth and claws that humanity hides in its heart. People are infinite, limitless, cannot be contained in boxes and neat little lines. To do so is foolishness.)

Four Houses, four choices. The thing that the Sorting Hat does not say to bright-eyed wizards and witches with wind-swept hair and sparklight at their fingertips: Choose wisely.

Hogwarts is a school, a place of learning. There is room to make mistakes, to fall, to be picked back up again with a kind and steady hand. Those of snapping teeth and fire; those of steady earth and a predator’s patience; those of flight and whisk of wind; those of scales and water’s malleability.

Students are students. Magic is magic.

-

The castle walls are _seeped_ in it, old runes and spells and the hearts of the Founders: Keep these children safe. The moving stairs and winding hallways plays tricks and pranks, but what friendly older sibling does not?

(In times of siege, enemies fall upon the stairs, are restricted of power by the castle itself. Hogwarts takes care of her own.)

-

Magic is magic is freedom is choice. The Sorting Hat sees and gives: options, assessments, and when the young wizard or witch _asks:_

_You're clearly in -_


End file.
